When comparing MonoGame vs Shoot 'Em Up Kit, the Slant community recommends MonoGame for most people. In the question“What are the best 3D game engines?” MonoGame is ranked 18th while Shoot 'Em Up Kit is ranked 55th. The most important reason people chose MonoGame is:
Support for iOS, Android, Mac OS X, Linux, Windows (both OpenGL and DirectX), Windows 8 Store, Windows Phone 8, PlayStation Mobile, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and the OUYA console with even more platforms on the way.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Cross-platform
Support for iOS, Android, Mac OS X, Linux, Windows (both OpenGL and DirectX), Windows 8 Store, Windows Phone 8, PlayStation Mobile, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and the OUYA console with even more platforms on the way.
Pro Open source
All the code is available to you ensuring you'll have the ability to make changes when you need to or even port to whole new platforms.
Pro Well-known and documented API
The framework implements the XNA 4 API, so games made in XNA can be ported to other platforms using this. This was the same API used by the Xbox Live Indie Games platform so there's lots of documentation online for it.
Pro Managed code
By leveraging C# and other .NET languages on Microsoft and Mono platforms you can write modern, fast, and reliable game code.
Pro Good community
The community MonoGame has to offer is helpful and mature.
Pro Performance on desktop
The performance on desktop platforms matches that of C++, but you still get all the pleasant features that C# has to offer.
Pro NPC Generators
Control NPC spawning position, frequency, maximum enemy active at once, and maximum enemies created by the generator.
Pro Support for user-created HLSL shaders
Both model and post-process shaders.
Pro Great for shoot 'em ups
The name fits the functionality.
Cons
Con Slow rate of updates
Versions 3.9 is overdue by a year, and version 4.0 is set to release in 2040.
Con Non-Windows tools are a bit funky
Monogame support for Xamarin Studio or Monodevelop is a bit shaky especially for library references. Only good non-Windows IDE compatible with MonoGame is Rider and that costs money & isn't open-source.
Con Lacking some details
No information on file formats or codecs in the manual.
Con Tutorials are too short and too old
The only real tutorial videos are 1 or 2 minutes long, and date from 2013.